This is probably the most prominent movie made in South Korea that looks at the Korean and GI relationship, Address Unknown:

The movie was released in 2001, but was supposed to depict events in 1970 South Korea.  Despite this three decades of difference the director claims in an interview included with the DVD that he wanted to make a movie that depicts how GI’s don’t like being in South Korea and shouldn’t be here.  So a fictional story from 1970 is supposed to prove this? The director Kim Ki-duk is actually quite talented considering his past work such as with Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring, but with this movie here he allows his personal hangups with Americans to turn this movie into nothing more than some more America bashing that was popular in the heydays of the Sunshine Policy that was sweeping South Korea at the time of the movie’s release.

The movie has a number of subplots to it that all link back to GI’s being the root of the problem.  The main GI character depicted in the movie is of course a drug dealer, abuser of Korean women, and every other negative stereotype you can think of.  The negative stereotypes are so ridiculous that the GI appears to be nothing more than a cartoon character to anyone who knows anything about the US military in Korea.  The fact that the director can even get 1970 US military uniforms correct only adds to the cartoonish feeling this movie has.  The GI of course eventually goes AWOL, tries to kill people, and is shot in the groin by an arrow by the Korean boy who hated him for stealing his girlfriend and abusing her.  There is some Korean minjok for you! I have to wonder who this guy Mitch Mahlum is that agreed to play the role of the GI in the film?  Despite being a main character in the film Han Cinema didn’t even bother to include him as an actor in their film profile.  Love HK Film called Mahlum’s performance as “hilariously bad” though.

What is even more ridiculous is that the soldier stole this guys girlfriend from him by promising to bring her on post to get her damaged eye fixed if she became his sweetheart.  So the soldier takes her on to the fictional “Camp Eagles” and the US military doctor fixes her eye.  I didn’t know base doctors provided medical service to Korean nationals so soldiers could get some from Korean women?

Another one of the subplots involves a Korean woman who had a son with a black servicemember who abandoned them in Korea.  She continues to write letters to the United States trying to find her son’s dad, but the letters always get returned as “Address Unknown”, thus the title of the movie.  It isn’t like Korean men don’t abandon Korean women, but when an American abandons their kids in South Korea they get faced with racial discrimination, just ask Hines Ward’s mom.  This is something the movie looks at with the bi-racial son facing discrimination and the shame of abandonment by his father that causes him to do horrible things at the end of the movie.  He is just one more in the line of characters in the movie that has things end badly for him with the root cause once again linked back to the US military presence in South Korea.

Korean movies like this have strong appeal at international film festivals which only further perpetuates the GI stereotype to a global audience that eats it up.  This is what IMDb had to say about the movie for example:

Romances end in blood and the frail hopes of individuals are torn apart in a vile karmic continuity of colonialism, civil war and occupation.

Colonialism and occupation?  I didn’t know 27,500 US soldiers stationed in primarily what Koreans would call ghettoes and getting ripped off by locals in every way possible, while at the same time providing a great defense discount to the Korean government is considered colonialism?

Anyway in the director interview with Kim Ki-duk included with the DVD release he continues to make whoppers such as his biggest one being that when GI’s commit crimes in Korea, the Korean legal system has no authority over them according to the SOFA treaty. This is nothing more than a blatant lie.  US soldiers regularly stand trial in Korean courts and have done so since 1966, with the first documented rape case handled by Korean courts was in 1967, the first murder was handled by the Korean courts in 1968, and the first reported taxi cab related incident was in 1969.  You can view my USFK court martial results that shows how GI’s today are regularly standing trial in Korean courts as well.

You can learn more about the US-ROK SOFA Agreement here instead of listening to an idiot like Kim Ki-duk.

The American SOFA with Korea is actually better than the SOFAs that Korea has signed with other countries because it allows US soldiers to stand trial in Korean civilian courts for crimes committed while off duty while the Korean SOFAs do not. Some examples of the Korean SOFAs being activated to clear Korean soldiers from being tried in foreign courts include the 2005 shooting of an Iraqi soldier by a Korean servicemeber as well as a 2006 traffic accident that killed a Kurdish political official in Irbil, Iraq. Each of these incidents were handled by Korean military courts because of the SOFA Korea signed with Iraq. Even more telling is that a ROK military servicemembers in Korea do not stand trial for crimes committed while on or even off duty. This just begs the question of if Korean civilian courts are not good enough for their own servicemembers who speak Korean and understand the system, than why should Korean civilian courts be good enough to try US servicemembers who do not understand the system much less even speak the language?

How can a major director in South Korea be this misinformed?  He is either an idiot or propagandist or most likely both.  He is not alone though because this rotting brain disease that Kim currently has is so widespread in South Korea that it causes these zombies to believe things as ridiculous as eating US beef will cause you to die and than go about trashing downtown Seoul and assaulting policemen because of it.

Kim goes on in the interview to claim that many American soldiers who are not officers live in a bad situation in Korea.  What does being an officer have to do with it?  As an officer I lived in a quonset hut and a crackhouse before while stationed in 2ID just like other soldiers.  Anyway he continues to claim that the GI’s stationed in Korea for two to three years have it very bad.  Two to Three year tours?  The vast majority of soldiers in Korea are on one year unaccompanied tours especially back when this movie was released.  He can’t get even something as basic as this correct, but wants people to believe that his movie speaks for US soldiers in Korea?

Kim’s idiotic claims only continue when he says that the scenes in the movie where a kaegoki farmer kills dogs by beating them to death is supposed to represent the violence between America and Korea in a subtle way.  Great Americans are to blame for kaegoki farming methods now too.  Kim Ki-duk also says he hopes the movie gives American politicians and citizens a better understanding of the US-Korea relationship.  The only thing this movie should give anyone that knows anything about the US military in Korea is revulsion at the sheer slime job Kim has done with this movie.